


By Which Harmony is Restored

by kho



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Time, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Self-Hatred, Threesome, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 12:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8533843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: Takes place between 6.01 and 6.10:  I loved the scene where Harvey was waiting for Rachel on her steps in 6.01 and they commiserated together over wine.  Harvey loves a good ritual..... Takes place between then, and ends just after Mike gets home.  Because even as the vitriol burns and roils through her, all she has to do is look into Harvey’s eyes to see that he’s got that same anger, that same hatred, and it’s directed in the same direction as hers is.  She doesn’t need to say anything.  Nobody has the ability to wound harder, cut deeper, then Harvey Specter himself, and there’s nothing she could ever say or would ever think to that he hasn’t said to himself a million times in the mirror.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored.  
> \- Terry Tempest Williams

The first time he shows up at her door at nine on a Friday, the only thing that’s surprising is how not surprised she is to see him.  He looks miserable, tired, and he’s holding a bottle of Seagrams whiskey and two tumblers.

She opens the door wider with a smile and he walks past her without meeting her eye.  “I do have my own glasses, Harvey.”

“I’m a fan of rituals, Rachel,” Harvey says, setting the tumblers down on the table and folding himself into the chair, crossing his legs as he uncaps the bottle.  “A good ritual requires staples.”  He gestures around the kitchen.  “This will be our place.  This will be my chair.  This will be my glass.”  He hands her one.  “This will be yours.”

She sits down opposite him and takes the glass from him, looks down at the amber liquid and breathes the heady aroma into her lungs.  “To trouble,” she asks.

“To trouble,” he answers back, and his smile doesn’t reach his eyes and neither does hers and when they clink glasses Rachel thinks it’s fitting he never asked her if she even wanted to have a ritual with him.

Nobody ever asked her if she wanted any of this.

On some nights they sit there silently and drink half of the bottle listening to the sound of the traffic on the street, of life passing by while they sit shiva to the life that Rachel and Mike were supposed to have, should’ve had.   She wonders what they’re sitting shiva to for Harvey but not enough to ask.

Because God Damn Mike had won that case.  He’d won it.  But instead, he’d sacrificed himself for the man sitting across from her.  He sacrificed his freedom, his life, her life.  He sacrificed _their life_ for Harvey, and there were moments on those Fridays when Rachel’s anger burned in her heart.  

When her hatred for the man sitting across from her sipping whiskey in his fucking $3000 suits with the tie pulled loose and hair fucked up from running his fingers through it too many times burned red and orange and blue in her veins and her fingers clenched in her glass and teeth ground together on words she wouldn’t say.

Because even as the vitriol burns and roils through her, all she has to do is look into Harvey’s eyes to see that he’s got that same anger, that same hatred, and it’s directed in the same direction as hers is.  She doesn’t need to say anything.  

Nobody has the ability to wound harder, cut deeper, then Harvey Specter himself, and there’s nothing she could ever say or would ever think to that he hasn’t said to himself a million times in the mirror.

On some nights, it’s actually fun.  Laughing together at the horrible impression Mike does of Sean Connery, and then laughing even harder at Harvey’s even worse impression.

One night, when Rachel is bemoaning the fact that she misses Mike so much she even misses his stupid, tragic hoodies and converse, Harvey looks her straight in the eyes and, in the most amazingly accurate impression she’s ever seen him do to date, he says, “I know, totally, like, do you prefer fashion victim or ensembly challenged?”

Rachel squeaks, dribbles scotch down her chin, and grabs Harvey’s wrist.  “Oh my god.  I _worship_ Alicia Silverstone ala Clueless!”

He grins slyly and refills both of their glasses.  “I prefer her work ala Aerosmith videos, but to each their own.”

On most nights, it’s a mixture of all of the above.  The levity, the anger, the hard questions, the everything else.  Some nights there are tears that turn into laughter (hers), and others when laughter that turns into tears (his, once, but then he blinked and they were gone).  Some nights they listen to music and others you could hear a pin drop.

They always end the same way.  Rachel blearily blinking her eyes as she realizes she’s about to pass out at her kitchen table and Harvey sticking the glasses in the sink, leaving them full of water.

Rachel standing and swaying and seeing two Harvey’s putting on his suit jacket.  Raising her hand and waving goodbye, stumbling to her bed and crashing face first into it without even taking off her bra, the sound of the door shutting behind Harvey a few moments later as she drifts off into sleep.

She wouldn’t trade her Friday nights for anything in the world, not even when they break her heart into a tiny million shattered pieces for the billionth time

He asks her once, “What was your wedding supposed to be?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, and draws infinity symbols in the sweat from her glass on the table with her fingernail.  “Only matters that it’s Mike I’m marrying.”

“Bullshit,” he says, and it’s quiet and like he almost didn’t even say it, but she looks up at him and he’s staring into her soul so she knows he did.  “You’ve had that planned since you were a little girl, Rachel, I know you did.”

“Doves,” she says, blinking back tears.  “Rose petals in the isle.  I wanted it to be outdoors with a gazebo, and a… an ice sculpture in the shape of the statue of liberty, and…”  She paints the picture in her mind and blinks as a tear falls.  “And me, Cinderella, with my glass slippers and birds holding my train walking down the aisle on my Dad’s arm and he’s so _proud_ and _smiling_ and _happy_ and Mom’s crying and laughing at the same time and Mike is standing there so handsome in his tux and you’re next to him because you’re always there, Harvey,  you’re always there with him, and…”

She fades out and lets her hand fall to the table and looks down at the speckled wood.

“And it matters.  It matters but it doesn’t, because I’d wear a garbage bag dress and a newspaper veil and a crackerjack ring as long as he’s the one putting it on my finger.”

He grins and shakes his head at her.  “And you’d be the prettiest garbage bag dress wearing bride in the world,” he says, and they clink their glasses together.  “Though let’s be honest.”

“Donna would never let me get away with that.”

He laughs then and gives her a wink.

She asks him later, “Are you sleeping at all?  You’re losing weight, and you look tired all of the time.”

“No,” he says, and doesn’t expand at all, and she doesn’t need him to.  She’s not sleeping well either but he’s the one working on getting Mike out.

The circles under his eyes are the only thing that keeps her going some days.

Another night, he asks, “How did it happen?”

“How did what happen,” Rachel asks, rubbing at her eyes.  She’s got three swallows left on what will be her last drink of the night, and she’s fading fast.

“Him telling you,” Harvey says, pouring what’s his last drink and knocking back half of it in one swallow.  “What he was.  Or, well.  Wasn’t.”

“It was in the file room, and I’m not… entirely sure how it came to be about that, but he said he was losing everything he loved, his grandmother, you--”

“He said that?”

She blinks, digging her knuckles into her thigh muscles to smooth the knots of sitting in the straight backed chairs of her kitchen table for hours with her high heels still on.  “What?”

“That he…”  Harvey doesn’t look at her, and she watches him looking into his glass like it can eat the words out of the air even as he says them.  “That he--”

“Loves you,” she asks, sitting back in her hair and draining the last of her glass.  “Yeah.  Yes, of course he loves you.”

He looks at her then and the raw haunted hurt makes a lump form in the back of her throat.  “Does he?”

“Harvey, he took a deal to go to prison for _two years_ on the condition that you would be off limits,” she says, and she tastes bile in the back of her throat and the rage hums under her skin.  “You don’t do that if you don’t love someone.”

But she stops there, because he’s breathing heavily and closing his eyes and Mike told her about his panic attacks and how they started like this and she thinks for a second he’s going to vomit on her kitchen floor or start hyperventilating.

She reaches over and grabs his hand in hers.  “Harvey.”

“Why,” he asks, and all the rage she feels under her skin, the hate, the guilt, the questioning, is encapsulated in his broken tone.  “What did I ever do to deserve that man’s…  It should be me in there, it should be… it should be me--  I don’t deserve his--”

“Yes you do,” she says, grabbing his hand harder.  When he doesn’t look at her she digs her nails into his skin until he does.  “Yes, Harvey, you do deserve it, you know how I know you deserve it?”

Reaching over she wipes the single tear that’s fallen out of his eye away.

“That’s how.”

One time she wakes up a few hours after going to bed to go to the bathroom to find him curled up in the corner of her sofa with his tie still around his neck.  She pulls the tie gently from around him and covers him with a blanket.

He grabs her wrist and holds her still.  “You know I’m doing everything, right?  I’m doing everything I can to bring him back to you.”

“I know,” she whispers, taking his hand off of hers and smoothing the hair back off of his forehead.  “Sleep.”

She asks him, about a month in, “You love him, don’t you.”

Except it’s not really a question.  She watches him stare down into his glass for long enough that she thinks he won’t answer.  Finally he takes a deep breath and nods.  “Yeah.  Of course I love him.”

“No, Harvey,” she says, reaching over to take the hand clutching into his glass hard enough she fears it may actually shatter.  She holds his hand in hers, warm and dry but shaking just the slightest bit, and squeezes.  “I mean, you’re _in love_ with him.”

Again he’s silent long enough for her to think he’s not going to say anything but then he reaches over and covers her hand on his with his other and meets her eyes.  “It doesn’t matter.  It’s you he’s in love with.”

She would’ve expected to feel some sort of jealousy at it.  Some sort of bitterness.  Anger.  Possessiveness.  Instead, watching him pinch his lips together and seeing the worry and pain in his eyes, she only feels sympathy.  “Yeah, you know…  I’m not sure it works that way.”

“What way,” he asks, and pulls his hands back.

She reaches over and twists open the cap to the whiskey, pours herself twice the usual amount and him the same.  “I don’t think the heart’s quite that cut and dry.  That limited.  I think maybe.”  She screws the cap back on and looks at him as she raises her glass to her lips.  “Maybe you can be in love with two people at the same time, Harvey.”

He looks away and this time he really doesn’t say anything, just takes a sip of the whiskey and closes his eyes and they let the soft notes of jazz fill in the silences.

He asks her one night as she’s almost to her bedroom door, “Do you have regrets?”

She holds herself up in the doorway and looks back at him.  “So many.”

He’s leaning his hip against the door jamb and looking down at his shoes.  “I did everything wrong.  I risked the entire firm.  I risked my license.  Jessica’s.  Louis’.  I asked them to lie for me and him again and again and again, and when they did, every single fucking time they did... I don’t think I hardly ever said thanks.”

“Do you regret it?”

He nods, looking up at her.  “And still, I’d do it all over again, a thousand times.  What the hell does that say about me?”

She smiles and laughs, shrugging.  “I don’t know, the same thing it says about me I suppose.”

Mike comes walking out of the jail at 8am on a Tuesday morning and he looks pale, his hair messy and shaved shorter than she knows he’d ever choose for it to be.  He looks amazing to her, and as she sits in the back of the car and twists around to watch him greet Harvey she starts crying the second she can tell they meet eyes because she sees the way Harvey’s shoulders finally settle.  

She hadn’t realized how stiff they’d been this whole time until she sees them relax.

He’s crying by the time he gets to her, cupping her face, kissing her, and her whole world is him in the span of those few seconds.  Just Mike and Mike’s eyes and Mike’s lips and Mike’s arms around her and Mike’s warmth and oh, God, Mike, Mike, _Mike is home._

She pulls up short though as they get to the door and leans forward, kissing him again.  “Hug him,” she says to him, quiet and soft in his ear.

Mike pulls back and looks at her and arches an eyebrow and she smiles and laughs, God she’s missed those eyebrows.  Of all things, those eyebrows.  “What?”

“You have no idea,” she whispers, glancing over her shoulder to where Harvey’s doing his best to hang back enough to give them that last moment of privacy before the long trip back to the city.  “Mike, he loves you so much.  You have no idea how much he’s been beating himself up.  How hard this has been on him.”

He laughs a little, and she knows.  He’s trying to gain some levity, he’s trying to regain his composure, but anger shoots through her at the dismissive twist to his lips.  “Hard on him, I was the one in there.”

“Yeah, and _we_ were sitting out here, fucking _dying inside_ ,” she says, dropping his hand.  “You have no idea--”

“Okay,” he says, stepping closer and grabbing both of her hands, lowering his forehead to hers.  “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

She slides into the seat and turns to watch them, watch Harvey not meet his eyes and try to wave away Mike’s thank yous, tries to pat him on the shoulder and move on, be done with it.  Smiles to herself when Mike tells him to shut up and forcibly pulls Harvey’s arms around  him and hugs him hard enough that Harvey looks like he maybe actually legitimately can’t breathe.

She looks away when Harvey’s eyes shut and he hugs Mike back just as hard because it feels private and he’d given them the courtesy so she owes him that much back.

Three days later at nine o’clock she opens the door to see Harvey grinning at her with a bottle of Seagrams and holding up a single tumbler.  “Figured we have a plus one this week.”

Mike sits between them and grins.  “It’s cute,” he says, pointing between them.  “My guy and my girl.  Having a ritual together.”  His grin widens as Harvey rolls his eyes.  “I mean, ya know.  I’m sitting there.  In jail.  Ya know, fearing for my life and all.  But.  Ya’ll have a _ritual_.”

Harvey’s mouth twists, somewhere between anger and humor.  “Mike.”

“No, it’s fine.  You two deserve to have your fun,” he says, gesturing between them again.  “I love you,” he says, grabbing Rachel’s hand and then reaching over to grab Harvey’s, “And I love you.  It’s only a good thing if you two love each other.  Just.”  He smirks and points a finger at them.  “No kissing.”

Harvey meets her eye and then he’s pushing back from the table.  “I shouldn’t have come.  Every good ritual comes to a natural end, maybe this is ours.”

Mike laughs. “Harvey.”

“It’s not Rachel I’d want to kiss,” Harvey says, halfway between standing and sitting, frozen bent over the table and staring down at it.  “I’d’ve thought you would’ve figured that out by now, Mike.”

Mike catches Harvey’s hand before he can step away from the table.  “Harvey?”

“Welcome home, Mike,” Harvey says, and Rachel feels it like electricity when they meet eyes, the room is supercharged with it and she actually loses the ability to breathe for a moment.  “I’ll see you Monday.”

“Wait,” Mike says, and then he stands fast enough to knock the chair back, it scrapes against the floor and Rachel reaches out to keep it from toppling over as Mike wraps his fingers around Harvey’s wrist and pulls him in.  “Don’t go.”

“Let go Mike,” Harvey says but Mike reaches out and cups the back of Harvey’s neck, and Harvey’s eyes shut.  Rachel lets out the breath she’d been holding as Mike steps closer to him.  “Mike.”

“Stay,” she says, voice coming out breathy and faint.  Mike looks over at her and she expects him to look like maybe he’d forgotten she was in the room but he doesn’t.  

He’s looking at her like, _do you get this?  Are you okay with this?  This is everything.  Everything I’ve wanted, all at once._ He’s looking at her like she’s in charge.  “Rachel?”

“Stay,” she says again, nodding as her voice comes out stronger, swallowing as Harvey’s eyes open to look at her.  “You should stay, Harvey.”

It sounds like a sob, the noise that Harvey makes when Mike leans forward that last little bit to kiss him, and then his hands are coming up to cup his face, fingers spreading up through his hair and cradling his head and Rachel feels dizzy and confused and relieved all at once.

Because again, she should feel jealous, she should feel bitter, angry, possessive.  

She doesn’t.

She stands as they break apart and Mike reaches back to take her hand but his eyes don’t leave Harvey.  “Please,” Mike says, swallowing thickly enough that Rachel can hear it.  “Don’t leave.”

“Maybe we start a new ritual,” she says, and holds out her free hand for Harvey.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr here under [@lovethesnark](http://lovethesnark.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Fanfiction Website  
> MOST of my fic is not on AO3, though all of my H5O and beyond is as AO3 didn't exist yet and it was too much to archive. It can be found on my website at [LoveTheSnark.com](http://www.lovethesnark.com).


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